"Felix, Tanya, Michael, and the development team at Williams Commerce have been essential partners in helping us elevate Virbac’s service quality for both pet owners and professionals. Their dedication, expert guidance, and solid execution have made them a reliable team to depend on. Their superbly reactive support whenever issues arise has been invaluable. Their professionalism and commitment are evident in every phase of our collaboration."
A leader in the animal pharmaceutical space, Virbac helps professionals and pet owners to take care of their animals by better serving animal health. The company provides everything from food supplements to dental and dermatology items, as well as products aimed at relieving animal joint pain and helping animals stay calm.
On the B2B side of the business, the organisation offers veterinarians technical products such as vaccines, parasiticides and antibiotics which are a core part of their activity.
Virbac has a presence in more than 100 countries and serves both, B2B and B2C customers. Prior to our work with the company, Virbac operated B2B stores in Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and the UK, and B2C stores in Poland, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Italy and the UK.
However, the company wanted to expand its ecommerce presence into more countries to better support animal health globally. At the same time, as part of this project, Virbac also wanted to progress a list of ongoing development tasks which had faced delays.
To support these aims, Virbac engaged our team for an ongoing BigCommerce development retainer which would include the launch of new B2B and B2C stores in a variety of countries including Czech Republic, Slovakia, Belgium, Netherlands, South Korea, South Africa, and Costa Rica.
Back in April 2020, Virbac selected BigCommerce as the ecommerce solution for its B2B and B2C online stores. BigCommerce is a great fit for Virbac due to the size of the organisation. Being a global brand and having both B2B and B2C customer bases, BigCommerce is the right scale for their requirements.
Virbac oversaw the creation of a custom BigCommerce store theme, a custom checkout and selected third-party integrations – all based on BigCommerce standard functionalities. This was to help develop a core model for Virbac stores and support global business processes between all Virbac affiliates. In recent years, this core model has been deployed across Virbac’s B2B and B2C webstores globally.
With ambitions to increase its number of global stores and further enhance its ability to engage with customers worldwide, Virbac sought a partner to build and launch a web store that rolls out this core model to each Virbac affiliate. This would require customisable features to ensure the flexible local management of each web store, as well as translations to local languages.
Additionally, the core model Virbac use through BigCommerce keeps evolving due to regular releases. This includes new features and allows for more business processes to be completed online.
Virbac therefore required an enhanced level of support to help role out new stores and introduce new features to its B2B and B2C offering.
To achieve these goals, Virbac needed an agency capable of servicing its continuous development and support aims, but to also enable consistent growth on a business scale, including targeting new markets globally. We were selected due to our ability to roll out changes and growth plans at a pace Virbac required.
Though Virbac had been working under the assumption they had a core model across all existing B2B and B2C sites, during the onboarding process, we found there were several discrepancies across the different sites.
As part of our onboarding work, we refactored the core model and created a core repository to ensure there was a reference point for all ongoing template changes. This was to make sure all stores are aligned in terms of their core template, as well as to track any new developments or changes made moving forward. This will help ensure consistency across all global sites.
During our onboarding work, we also recognised theme templates were out of date. We are now updating the core templates, with work on the B2C site completed and work on B2B ongoing. This process will see the two websites integrate the latest BigCommerce Cornerstone themes.
Since onboarding, we have integrated BigCommerce’s B2B buyer portal for Virbac’s B2B stores, which will be rolled out in early 2025. This delivers a streamlined user experience and allows Virbac to customise the look and feel their B2B customers enjoy when purchasing products. Virbac can also manage the features their customers have access to and create unique B2B storefronts from a single BigCommerce control panel.
On the B2C front, we have introduced product subscriptions through Mini BC – an external third-party app which supports recurring subscriptions for BigCommerce. This was inherited as part of the onboarding process, and we have worked to get the API integration in place to enable B2C customers to seamlessly purchase their favourite items regularly.
We have also introduced custom checkouts for B2C customers on three new stores. This delivers a tailored experience that can help support customers in making purchases that matter to them.
Since onboarding, we have worked on four new B2C stores – for customers in Czech Republic (now live), Slovakia, Belgium and Netherlands (in progress).
On the B2B front, Virbac now have nine stores, with new stores launched in Austria, stores in progress for South Korea, South Africa, and Costa Rica, and plans to roll out a store for Japan later down the line.
As an ecommerce retainer client, we deliver ongoing support and development for Virbac to ensure their global ecommerce solution continues to support the company’s mission of better serving animal health. For example, through its B2B stores Virbac can help more veterinarians place orders outside of business hours through a more convenient process, as many professionals often have to do their administrative work late at night or during the weekend.
This partnership has allowed us to tackle many of the issues the company faced around ecommerce delivery and includes core template changes and updates.
Our next steps include the roll out of BigCommerce’s B2B Buyer Portal which will elevate the B2B customer experience to a new level.
We continue to look at innovative solutions to offer high levels of flexibility around website management and customer experience, and we will work closely with the Virbac team to deliver high-level reports to support drive data-driven decisions and highlight new areas of opportunity.
2024
Pharmaceutical
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The Creative Mill
64 Mansfield Street
Leicester
United Kingdom
LE1 3DL
+44 116 326 1116
Commercial Quay
84 Commercial Street
Leith
Edinburgh
EH6 6LX
7th Floor
666 3rd Ave.
New York
United States
NY 10017
Level 17
31 Queen Street
Melbourne
VIC 3000
+61 03 8652 1590
The Corenthum Tower
B54 4th Floor
A-41 Sector 62
Noida
Uttar Pradesh
201301
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